Intel to Unveil 15 New Chips Today; AMD Rivalry Expected to Heat Up

Intel Corp. plans to unveil 15 next-generation Pentium III microprocessors for desktop, notebook and server-class computers today.

Intel declined to offer details about the new chips--which have been expected for months--but analysts say that they will operate as fast as 667 megahertz and employ design changes to improve performance.

For some applications, Intel’s new processors may leapfrog the performance of rival Advanced Micro Devices’ new Athlon, the fastest processor for Windows-compatible computers, said Michael Slater, an analyst with Cahners MicroDesign Resources in Sebastopol, Calif.

“The bottom line is that AMD and Intel performance are very comparable,” Slater said.

The new Intel chips abandon Intel’s long-standing modular design that combined the Pentium microprocessor and cache--high-speed memory chips that accelerate computing performance--on a small card. The new Pentium IIIs integrate the cache into the processor circuitry, reducing the overall size and enhancing performance.

The new processors will also move Intel to .18 micron chips from the .25 micron scale used in most of its current products; the rating refers to microscopic differences in the width of processor pathways. The smaller the number, the faster the chip can operate, the less power it requires and the less it costs to manufacture.

This fall, the competition between Intel and AMD will heat up as Intel struggles to correct a flaw in its 820 chipset--a key component designed to support the new processors--and AMD tries to ramp up production of its Athlon line.

To that end, AMD recently dedicated a $1.9-billion chip fabrication plant in Dresden, Germany. But it faces ongoing shortages of such key parts as motherboards (the primary PC circuit board) because of lingering problems at Taiwan-based suppliers who were hit hard in September’s earthquake.